


in the winter of your years

by Kyele



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Happy Ending, I Blame Tumblr, M/M, References to Homophobia, Sad Ending, because apparently that's a thing I do, end of life, it's kind of both tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 06:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3600135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/pseuds/Kyele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://justastormie.tumblr.com/">justastormie</a> asked (<a href="hippity-hoppity-brigade.tumblr.com/post/108556923200/for-the-meme-constanne-and-obligitory">on tumblr</a>): <i>who dies first?</i><br/><a href="http://hippity-hoppity-brigade.tumblr.com">hippity-hoppity-brigade</a> answered, <i>it’s stupid and sappy and richelieu would curse himself into hell if he knew, but they go together, holding hands on their porch.</i></p><p>That's it. That's the fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the winter of your years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobinLorin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLorin/gifts), [paklalat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paklalat/gifts).



> I hope you two darlings don't mind me taking your back-and-forth and turning it into this. (I was also fuelled by [this](http://hippity-hoppity-brigade.tumblr.com/post/111407952175/justastormie-hippity-hoppity-brigade-modern-au) incredible headcanon.) Thanks for being an inspiration :)

“Let’s watch the sunset tonight.”

Jean doesn’t know why he says it; it’s an impulse, and he goes with it. He’s up to his wrists in soapy water cleaning dishes. The dishwasher’s on the blink again. Armand is standing next to him with a clean towel, ready to dry. He looks at Jean in surprise.

“It’s winter,” Armand says.

“It’s March,” Jean contradicts. “Technically it’s spring. And it’s gotten warmer this week.”

Armand smiles. “It’s still forty degrees out.”

“So we’ll take a blanket.” Jean shrugs, handing over a plate.

“Why do you want to?”

“I don’t know.” Jean stares down at the pot in the sink, the slow careful circles he’s making with the sponge. He can’t press down hard to scour the grime away as he’d used to. The arthritis is too strong in his fingers now. They barely curve around a spoon.

“I’ll make us tea before we go,” Armand says after a moment.

They finish washing the dishes in silence, and then Armand makes tea, as he’d promised. It warms Jean through. The sun’s already sinking behind the trees as they take their blankets out and sit together on the porch swing.

The little house on the edge of their small town has been home for them for fifty years. It’s seen their ups and their downs. It had been where Jean had come running in the mornings before school, coming in from his family’s suburb, so that he and Armand could walk the rest of the way together. It had been where they’d come back to after school to do their homework and climb the sprawling oak tree that had been there since Armand’s grandfather’s father had planted it. It had been where Jean had escaped to when Jean’s father had been drinking and Armand’s ma had said Jean could stay, but they had to keep out of her way, she was busy.

It had been the site of their first kiss. Terrified fumbling boys on the porch, all too aware that Armand’s mother had been in the kitchen and his father upstairs, and if either of them had looked out of the window –

They’d been dancing around it for months before the longing to kiss had finally overcome their fears. It had been a moment of bravery in a lifetime of fear. Eventually it had cost them everything.

Years later, when Armand’s parents had both died and Jean had come back from the army for good, Armand had asked Jean to move in on that porch. For decades they’d passed as bachelor roommates. In later years they’ve become aware that they’re more or less an open secret, that most of the town – younger than them, now, children of a different generation – think of them fondly as honorary grandfathers.

Jean has always thought of that moment on the porch as their wedding. He’d come to see Armand still in his uniform, because he had had no other home in town anymore and nowhere to change. Jean’s father had finally drunk himself to death on Jean’s first tour and Jean’s mother had sold the place and left with no word to the son she’d once seen kissing a boy. Jean had been supposed to be at the VA half an hour ago to talk with a transition specialist about Return To Civilian Life. But he’d had to come see Armand first.

He’s had no idea whether Armand had even still lived here. Armand might have left. Moved to the big city. His political career might have taken off. There might not have been anything left of the boy Armand’s mother had caught Jean kissing, so long ago, before Jean’s father had beaten him bloody and sent Jean off to military school without even the chance to say goodbye.

Armand had been there. He had still been there, sitting on that porch swing, as if he’d never moved a muscle since Jean had finished kissing him all those years before. His political career hadn’t taken Armand out of the small town of their birth and away from Jean forever. Armand confesses later that, in a fit of youthful ardor, he’d tried to enlist and find Jean. Instead he’d been intercepted by the other side of the defense world and ended up in military intelligence.

To this day Jean doesn’t know everything Armand has done. Even after Jean had left the army and taken a position in the town’s police force, Armand had stayed in his old career. Sometimes Armand would go away for days or weeks on end. Sometimes Armand would come back smiling and sometimes he’d come back with haunted eyes and a compulsive need to trace patterns in Jean’s skin. Jean knows that Armand has made decisions that still wake him up in the middle of the night, and that he turns off the TV, sometimes, when the news comes on.

But that night, Jean hadn’t yet known all of that. He’d just known that Armand had come running straight off that porch when he’d seen Jean, and kissed him there on the porch in the shade of the sprawling oak tree. It had been Armand’s porch, by then, since the car crash that had taken both his parents. And the first thing Armand had asked hadn’t been how the army had been, or what Jean’s future plans might be, or even whether Jean were in town on leave or to stay. Armand had cut through all of that and asked if Jean would promise never to leave again. And for all the decades since – whether they’ve been happy or sad, furious or calm, on the edge of a permanent rift or never more in love – they still come out here, when the night is fine, and watch the sunset together.

“It’s a beautiful one tonight,” Jean says through a yawn. The blanket slips down to his lap, but he doesn’t care. He lays his head against Armand’s shoulder and watches the play of light through the trees.

“My heart skipped another beat today,” Armand says after a moment. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you earlier.”

Jean nods. Armand’s heart has never been strong; as a child he hadn’t been allowed to participate in the more aerobic sports, or drink caffeine, or watch scary movies. It’s what had prevented him from enlisting as he’d wished and brought him to the attention of military intelligence. Armand’s been taking one medicine or another for it for most of his life. But his heart’s been skipping more often over the last year. The town doctor talks cheerfully, but neither Jean or Armand have ever had any stomach for lies.

“I’ve been feeling run down lately myself,” Jean admits. “Just… I run out of energy. You know? Even more than I think I should.”

“You should see Lemay,” Armand says.

Jean tries to smile. “I don’t think I need to,” he says.

Armand nods. He understands that Jean doesn’t mean _I don’t think it’s serious._

Instead Armand says, “I don’t think we’ll go to church tomorrow.”

“The children will worry,” Jean protests automatically.

“They’ll understand. They always have.”

That much is true. The children have always understood the idiosyncrasies of Jean and Armand’s life, because of the often-turbulent circumstances they themselves have faced. Jean and Armand have never reproduced. But every orphan and every stray their small town has ever known has found a home with them. Every child of a broken home has found shelter under their roof. Every teenager in crisis has gone through their moment of transition under the shade of the big oak tree in the backyard, the one that filters the sunlight and makes it strike the porch in interesting ways.

Jean yawns again. He’s tired, yes, as he’s said. But there’s something to it he’s never felt before. He’s been tired often in his life. This is something more.

“I feel it too,” Armand murmurs. His breath stirs Jean’s hair gently.

“Is it…?”

Armand’s chin bumps Jean’s ear as he nods. “I think so.”

Jean pulls away, just a little. Just long enough to look again at the man who’s been by him his entire life. The one whom Jean’s always thought of as his husband, although for decades that word had been forbidden to them and even now that it might be possible they’ve never gathered up the courage to reach for it.

In the light of the setting sun Armand flickers between two states. When the light hits him clearly he’s the old man Jean has been familiar with for a long time now. It had crept up on them gradually, old age; one ache at a time, one more pill, one more time when they had to say _I can’t, it hurts, I need to stop._ By now Jean hardly thinks about it. He takes his pills mechanically, tucks the extra pillow behind Armand’s back automatically, checks for the phone and Jean’s EpiPen and Armand’s med-alert bracelet regularly. They’re old. They’ve grown old together, just like they’d always said they would. Just like they’ve always feared and hoped would be true.

But when the light filters through the trees or the clouds, when it turns red and orange and pink with the pollution from the coal plant on the outskirts of town, it plays tricks on Jean’s fading vision. Armand’s hair darkens back to black. His wrinkles smooth away. The crook of his nose from when Jean had broken it – accidentally, when they’d been repairing the fence and the post had slipped – straightens out to its former aquiline glory. Only Armand’s eyes stay the same. Steady and loving, shining with fidelity, Jean’s anchor for all these years.

And yet. “I’m afraid,” Jean whispers.

Armand tugs Jean close again. Wraps him up like Armand is going to protect him from this. “Me too,” he admits softly.

They stay like that for a while, watching the setting sun. They speak only twice more to each other.

The first time begins with Jean’s question: “Heaven or Hell?”

Armand doesn’t answer right away. “I hope for Heaven,” he says at last, slowly. “I haven’t always been a good man – though I’ve tried to always work for the best – but sometimes I’ve been wrong. More than sometimes. Or right for the wrong reasons. But I hope that the good I’ve done outweighs it.”

Armand’s silent for a moment longer. Then he adds, “I think the world is a better place than it was when I was born. I think I had something to do with that.”

“I think so too,” Jean promises. He doesn’t look up, but he knows Armand is smiling, gratefully.

They’ve had their arguments over this, too many to count. Whether Armand’s ruthless practicality is right or justified, whether Jean can stand to look at him, the meaning of cruelty and where the line exists. There have been times when neither of them have thought their relationship would survive. And yet they’ve come to here in the end.

“You will go to Heaven, of course,” Armand says. “You have always been my angel.”

“More like your shoulder devil’s advocate,” Jean grumbles without heat. Armand kisses his forehead again. Jean subsides. There’s no point in false modesty any more, and he’s always tried to steer Armand towards good things. Jean can be wrong, as any man can, and maybe there have been times when he’s steered Armand astray. But he thinks – all things considered – that he’s done more good than harm.

They fall silent again. They speak only once more.

The final things they say to each other are this:

“I love you,” Jean says. “Thank you. It’s been amazing.”

“And I love you,” Armand says in return. He doesn’t add anything else. He doesn’t have to.

They hold hands underneath the blanket. Jean lays his head on Armand’s shoulder. Armand closes his eyes.

The sun sinks below the trees, slowly, and takes its light with it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is, inevitably, from [Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead](http://www.lib.ru/PXESY/STOPPARD/r_g_engl.txt): _So there's an end to that - it's commonplace: light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early._


End file.
